Computing devices including personal computers (PCs), laptop computers (laptops), cellular phones, and personal digital assistants (PDAs) that allow access to the Internet are becoming increasingly affordable and popular. Consequently, use of the Internet and Internet-based services including electronic mail (e-mail) and electronic commerce (e-commerce) is proliferating.
Internet users frequently experience problems that include spam, viruses, fraud, and hacking. Some jurisdictions have laws that forbid gambling, hosting offensive content, and infringing copyrights and trademarks on the Internet. Tracking or locating the computing devices where these problems originate is often difficult.
Data transmitted on the Internet typically includes some identifying information that can be used to track the computing device that transmitted the data. For example, an e-mail includes a header that identifies at least an identity of a sender of the e-mail and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of sending and receiving mail servers. The identity of the sender, however, can be changed or hidden. Additionally, the IP addresses of the mail servers may not always be permanent. For example, some public computers may be assigned dynamic IP addresses, while most home computers may have static IP addresses. Consequently, tracking spam and viruses originating from most public and home computers can be difficult.
Referring now to FIG. 1, an example of a transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) frame is shown. As shown, a TCP/IP frame includes source and destination medium access controller (MAC) address fields, an ether type field, and a payload (data) field. A user of a transmitting device may modify the source MAC address to change or hide the identity of the user.